Video 6:17
Journalist spoke to Prisoner X before his arrest

Tony JonesUpdated
Thu Feb 14 23:37:00 EST 2013

Australian journalist Jason Koutsoukis, who spoke with Ben Zygier and asked him about allegations that he was a spy not long before he was taken into custody, discusses what he knows about the so-called Prisoner X.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: There's one Australian journalist who spoke with Ben Zygier shortly before he was seized by Israeli authorities.

We're joined now from Beirut by freelance journalist, former Fairfax Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis.

TONY JONES: Can you tell us how you first came to speak to Ben Zygier back in December of 2009?

JASON KOUTSOUKIS: Well, I was contacted in October of 2009 by an Australian intelligence source who wanted to alert me to what he believed was a pattern of Israeli intelligence exploiting Australian law to obtain new sets of identity documents.

And he identified three people to me who were returning from Israel to Australia - these were Australian citizens and Israeli citizens - and these people were returning to Australia at different intervals between 2000 and 2009 to change their names, get new sets of documents, passports, driver's licences and then using those documents to travel to countries that Israeli citizens were not - are not normally allowed to go to.

These are countries like Syria, Iran, Lebanon. And one of those people that I was told had been doing this was Ben Zygier. So we began working on the story in October and it took quite a long time to try and firm up different details that I was given and in December I felt I was in a position to try to contact Ben Zygier and I was able to get a number for him in Israel.

I rang that number for the first time, I think, around December 8 or December 7 and I had a conversation with him and that was the first of three or four conversations that we had.

TONY JONES: Did you put it to him what the intelligence official had put to you, the suspicions that they were actually spying for Israel and using their Australian passports as cover to do it?

JASON KOUTSOUKIS: Yes, I did. And Ben Zygier, he listened to me. It seemed clear to me that he knew who I was, which is unsurprising given that he's from Melbourne and that I had written for The Age for a long time.

So he listened politely to what I had to say and it was, even to me, an outlandish story, what I was putting to him. And at the end of what I had to say, he responded and denied it as strenuously as he could possibly deny something like that. It would have been as if I'd put it to you, Tony, that you were working for Israeli intelligence.

He was just incredulous and then we wound up the conversation. I found him to be very convincing and then I went away and tried to do more work on the story and it wasn't until January, mid-January that I contacted him again and in the subsequent conversations that we had he just grew increasingly exasperated at my inability to accept his denials.

TONY JONES: Now, you obviously went ahead and published the story. I don't think at the time you named him, but did you believe that you'd actually proven the case, that these Australians, more than one of them in fact, were actually spying for Israel?

JASON KOUTSOUKIS: I didn't believe that we'd proven that case. I believe that we - I had a couple of different sources for the - to confirm that they had - that these three people had changed their names and that they had used these travel documents to go to different - you know, these sensitive countries, sensitive for Israel, countries such as Iran and Syria, but I could not be sure what exactly Ben Zygier was doing in those countries.

It seemed to me that he was doing some kind of intelligence-gathering, but I couldn't be more certain than that. And as I've said, I found his denials to be very convincing.

TONY JONES: Jason, one of your old colleague at Fairfax, Phil Dorling, has tonight posted a story suggesting that unnamed security officials have said that Zygier may have been about to dump, if you like, on the Israelis, to reveal information about the use of - the fraudulent use of Australian passports by the Israeli spy organisation either to a journalist or to the Australian Government. Would that surprise you?

JASON KOUTSOUKIS: Well, he certainly didn't give an indication that he was going to do that to me. But I contacted one of the other people, one of the other names that I'd been given and that person behaved very differently. He didn't listen to me really at all. He just cut me off and I was never able to contact that person again. Whereas I guess Ben Zygier did listen to what I had to say and he kept taking my calls.

I thought at the time that perhaps Israeli intelligence were aware of our phone conversations. There were a couple of strange incidences that happened around my home in Jerusalem which I didn't really take seriously at the time, but in hindsight I think, well, it is possible that they were monitoring our conversations and maybe - I can't remember or pinpoint the exact last time that I spoke to Ben Zygier, but I think it was probably in early to mid-February and so it's quite possible that they were aware that he was talking to me and became concerned, but really that is just my own speculation.

TONY JONES: Yes, thanks a lot, Jason. Obviously a lot more to unfold in this rather grim story. We thank you very much for talking to us tonight.